MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
August 24- August 31, 2006 Edition
Quill Awards
Announces
2006 Nominees NEW YORK, NY/8/22/2006NBC Universal Television Stations and Reed Business Information (RBI) have announced the five nominees in each of 19 categories for the 2006 Quill Awards, during a live-streamed event hosted by Al Roker at the Borders store at Columbus Circle, New York City.
The winners will be announced on October 10th during a gala ceremony hosted by NBC News Lester Holt. Produced by Al Roker Entertainment, Inc., the one-hour Quill Awards television special, hosted by Al Roker and NBC News Natalie Morales, will be carried on the NBC Universal Owned and Operated Television Stations on Saturday, October 28, 2006, and will also air on various NBC affiliates across the country. For the first time, the Quills awards event will be streamed live via a link from MSNBC.com, www.quills.msnbc.com. The Quills is the first awards program to honor excellence in publishing and include consumers in the voting process. Borders, Barnes & Noble, PARADE, USA Today, American Booksellers Association, Book Sense, and Ingram Book Group are participating supporters. Bank of America is a presenting sponsor.
The Platinum Award is a Quills executive committee-selected annual award honoring special achievement. In recognition of her important work with the Kennedy Library Foundation and her commitment to providing support for education and literacy in New York, Caroline Kennedy will be presented with the inaugural Platinum Quill Award. The Platinum Quill also pays tribute to the 50th anniversary of her father’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Profiles In Courage.
The Quills Corporate Literacy Award will be given to Target, in recognition of its numerous and pro-active literacy and book programs including its national Ready. Sit. Read! program, Target Parent/Child Book Club, and sponsorship of Family Reading Nights, Reach Out and Read, Letters About Literature, United Through Reading, and several book festivals. Target recognizes reading is the foundation for lifelong learning and has created several programs to help instill a love of reading in children, said Laysha Ward, Vice President, Community Relations, Target. It is an honor to receive the Quills Corporate Literacy Award in recognition of our continued commitment to early childhood reading.
Gerry Byrne is Chairman of The Quill Awards and Chairman of The Quills Literacy Foundation, which he founded. We are thrilled with the excellent work of the Nominating Board, which has provided us with a powerful list of outstanding finalists, said Byrne, adding, Now, we enter the stage that sets The Quills apart among book awardsturning the voting process and final decision-making over to consumers. Building on our program, we have expanded opportunities for the reading public to select this years award recipients.
During the consumer-voting period, the NBC Universal Owned and Operated Television Stations and NBC affiliates will run 30- and 15-second television spots to publicize the Quill Awards and drive viewers to the voting site. MSNBC.com, the number one TV news site on the web, averaging 25 million unique visitors per month, will run strategic promotions and editorial coverage of top Quills news throughout the site, including its home page. PARADE and USA Today will run a series of daily national ads regarding consumer voting for the Quills, and Borders will conduct extensive in-store and consumer e-mail Quill marketing. Barnes & Noble will promote the Quills nominated titles on barnesandnoble.com, Book Sense stores will distribute Quill Awards bookmarks to consumers, and Ingram Book Group will list the nominated titles on its website and in an ad.
President of MSNBC.com Charlie Tillinghast commented, Were pleased to be involved with the Quills, a book award that brings readers right into the voting process. Were happy to extend our voting technology to the Quills and involve our large consumer base in this excellent program. Im looking forward to a successful partnership.
On August 20th, the nominees for the 2006 Quills Childrens Chapter Book/ Middle Grade and Childrens Illustrated Book categories were announced when Gerry Byrne appeared on NBCs Weekend Today to donate 1,000 books from The Quills Literacy Foundation to the Today Turns the Page book drive. Destined for school libraries that were devastated by Hurricane Katrina, the books were donated to The Quills Literacy Foundation by HarperCollins, Miramax Books, Penguin Group, and Random House. Today Turns the Page was launched by Weekend Today and Scholastic Inc.
Opening the awards process to include the reading public, winners will be determined by consumer voting online at www.quillsvote.com and at www.quills.msnbc.com; online voting begins on August 22 and continues through September 30, 2006. Readers can cast their ballots for their favorites among the nominees shortlisted for each category, and choose from the finalists in all genres for the Book of the Year.
To be eligible for the long list of nominees, a book must have been published in its original format in North America between July 1, 2005 and June 30, 2006, and marketed in the United States. It must also meet one of the following criteria: a starred review in Publishers Weekly, a Borders Original Voices title, or an appearance at the top of the Bestseller lists of Publishers Weekly or Borders. An extensive national panel of approximately 6,000 invited booksellers and librarians made the nominations for The Quill Award categories. For a complete listing of the 2006 Quills nominees, please go to: www.thequills.org/2006.html or to www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13737751/
The award event will be held in the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. It will be produced by Al Roker, Entertainment, Inc., and executive produced by Al Roker and Lisa Sharkey. Designed to inspire reading while promoting literacy, the Quills will honor winners in more than 21 different categories, including Book of the Year, Debut Author of the Year, a Quills Corporate Literacy Award, and a new special honor, Best Book to Film.
The NBC Universal Television Stations are owned and operated by NBC Universal, one of the worlds leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience. Reed Business Information is North America’s largest business-to-business information provider, covering 23 market sectors with more than 100 market-leading publications and 75 websites, as well as a range of services. It is publisher of Publishers Weekly, Variety, Library Journal, and School Library Journal.
Al Roker Entertainment, Inc. produces top-quality programs for cable and network television and is working on series and specials for: The NBC Station group, The Food Network, Court TV, Fine Living, A&E and The Discovery Networks.
Further information and the complete list of nominees are available at www.thequills.org. Information on The Quills Literacy Foundation can be found at www.quillsliteracy.org.
